has learned. One of the players, a highly secretive startup called Bsightful, is part-owned and backed by one of the biggest surveillance vendors in the world, the Nasdaq-listed, $4 billion market cap company Verint, three industry sources told. The other is an established player in the Israeli surveillance industry, Rayzone, whose Echo product promises “mass collection of all internet users in a country.
If a surveillance company runs a DSP, they don’t even need to provide the ads. They can simply collect the location and other phone data the app developers are willfully providing, the data passing through what’s commonly called the “bidstream.” But they do have to send back ads “from time to time” to keep the DSP active, according to one industry source. They also need to get as many app developers as possible to include the code pointing to their DSP, so they have maximum possible coverage.
The information is then packaged up into a software tool for government customers, allowing them to search whole areas or for individuals. For instance, if they have a phone number of a target, that should be enough to get their last known location, as long as they have the relevant app on their device.
Venntel, one of the U.S. government’s suppliers for mobile location data, has used the bidstream to acquire information, according to a disclosure by Customs and Border Protection to Senator Wyden’s office, according to . CBP didn’t disclose just how Venntel had access to the bidstream. It also declined to say how it was using the data.It’s unclear to whom Bsightful sells its location data. Its website says nothing about what the company does and it has no social media profiles. The company has four cofounders and executives—Avraham Bahron, Guy Gildor, Guy Amir and Asher Elazar—though none were reachable at the time of publication.
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